When I tell some of my married friends about my weekend relationship, they turn 15 shades of green with envy.
“That sounds so perfect!” they say wistfully. And, I have to say, it is. For me, anyway.
True, I don’t get to have dinner every night with my soulmate like I did for over 30 years with Fred. But, once he passed, I knew that the potential drawbacks of a 24/7 relationship far outweighed any benefits I’d get as a woman headed toward the finish line of life’s marathon.
By ruling out living with anyone or getting remarried, I’ve protected myself from the heartbreaks of caregiving as well as those day-to-day annoyances caused by everyone but me. Ha!
Granted, Rick, aka the World’s Best Boyfriend, is the kind of all-round prince of a guy most women would quickly elevate to Marriage Material. So what’s he doing with a fiercely independent girl like me?
Fortunately, he assures me that he’s happy with the arrangement. He’s still doing contract work Monday through Friday so, like me, he’s occupied during the week. Plus, he likes looking forward to our weekend “flings.”
Most rock songs about the weekend either imply or come right out and slam the rigors of the workaday life. The O-Jay’s 1975 R&B song ”Livin’ for the Weekend” describes work as “drudgery,” with the narrator coming home dead on his feet, too tired to eat.
LoverBoy’s 1981 power pop classic “Working for the Weekend,” on the other hand, plays up the joys of the weekend without saying much of anything about the rest of the week. Since the song’s rousing chorus implies that the weekend is better than the work week, you might expect a typical fan to be party-happy, work-hating type.
Since I’ve always loved my work, I don’t fit into that category. Still, I’ve always adored the song. For me, it’s all about the beat. Those three strikes of the cowbell at the beginning never fail to get me on my feet. LoverBoy could be singing ”Ladida, Ladida, Ladida,” and I’d still be in earworm heaven.
In one of life’s delicious ironies, the lead singer of LoverBoy ended up changing his tune about the song. In an ad for the job-search site Indeed, Mike Reno apologized for lyrics that seemingly disparaged the work week. Wearing his trademark headband, Reno rewrote the lyrics to praise the work week and say that the weekend is okay, too.
While some people might wish every day could be Saturday, I prefer variety, the spice of life. Fred and I did most of our concert-going, restaurant-dining, and movie-watching on the weekends. And, since those activities cost money, we found ourselves quite literally working for the weekend.
Living together 24/7, we also found ways to give each other our own space. Fred worked upstairs, I downstairs, and we called our kitchen the break room. If I had it to do again, I’d have made more of my own money and insisted on a “man cave” where Fred could watch sports and play the guitar.
These days, I do, indeed, have a 24/7 companion: My rescue dog Desi. He came to me with extreme separation anxiety, which I thought would be a minor problem since I spend a lot of time at home. Wrong! Hundreds of dollars of training later, he still hides from me in his tunnel behind my bed whenever he senses I’ll be leaving the house.
My sweet black and white mutt was rejected by two different families before he came to me. Coincidentally, I’ve dated twice-divorced men who arrived with different but no-less troubling issues.
Rick, on the other hand, came to me with minimal baggage. A widower who, like me, enjoyed a happy marriage full of compromise, he’s the kind of guy who empties my recycling without my saying a word. He has the same light-hearted, bouncy spirit as “Working for the Weekend.”
In fact, he’s so easy-going, it might make sense for me to make him, rather than Desi, my 24/7 guy. But here’s the thing: It’s much easier to be anti-social around an animal than a person.
If I don’t feel like talking or listening, I can tune out Desi in ways that would be heartless to do with a human. And, when the weekend comes around, I can have Alexa play “Working for the Weekend” and dance around my kitchen with Rick, the World’s Best Boyfriend.
Joan Axelrod-Contrada is a writer who lives in Florence. Reach her at joanaxelrodcontrada@gmail.